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THE WORLD NEEDS WATER-MIT JUST INVENTED GETTING IT FROM THE AIR!
MIT Invents “Bubble Wrap” That Pulls Fresh Water From The Air…Even In The Driest Places In The World
MIT researchers have invented a new water-harvesting device — a high-tech version of “bubble wrap” — that can pull safe drinking water straight from the air, even in extreme environments like Death Valley, the driest desert in North America, according to LiveScience.
In a study published June 11 in Nature Water, the team described how their innovation could help address global water scarcity. “It works wherever you may find water vapor in the air,” the researchers wrote.
The device is built from hydrogel, a material that can absorb large amounts of water, sandwiched between two glass layers resembling a window. At night, the hydrogel draws moisture from the air. During the day, a special coating on the glass keeps it cool, allowing water to condense and drip into a collection system.
The hydrogel is molded into dome shapes — likened to “a sheet of bubble wrap” — that swell when absorbing moisture. These domes increase surface area, helping the material absorb more water.
LiveScience writes that the system was tested for a week in Death Valley, a region spanning California and Nevada that holds the record as the hottest and driest place in North America.
Despite the harsh conditions, the harvester consistently produced between 57 and 161.5 milliliters of water daily — about a quarter to two-thirds of a cup. In more humid regions, researchers expect even greater yields. According to MIT representatives, this approach outperforms earlier water-from-air technologies and does so without needing electricity.
One major breakthrough was solving a known problem with hydrogel-based water harvesters: lithium salts used to improve absorption often leak into the water, making it unsafe. The new design adds glycerol, which stabilizes the salt and keeps leakage to under 0.06 parts per million — a level the U.S. Geological Survey deems safe for groundwater.
Though a single panel can’t supply an entire household, its small footprint means several can be installed together. The team estimates that eight 3-by-6-foot (1-by-2-meter) panels could provide enough drinking water for a household in areas lacking reliable sources. Compared to the cost of bottled water in the U.S., the system could pay for itself in under a month and remain functional for at least a year.
“We imagine that you could one day deploy an array of these panels, and the footprint is very small because they are all vertical,” said Xuanhe Zhao, an MIT professor and co-author of the study. “Now people can build it even larger, or make it into parallel panels, to supply drinking water to people and achieve real impact.”
The researchers plan to continue testing the device in other low-resource areas to better understand its performance under different environmental conditions.
FREDDY THE CUSTOM INSPECTION K-9 WAS DOING HIS JOB WHEN A MEAN EGYPTIAN KICKED HIM!
Man who kicked customs dog at Dulles ordered to leave U.S.
A 70-year-old man pleaded guilty to attacking Freddie the Beagle and was ordered to pay $840 in vet fees.
“He violently kicked Freddie with sufficient force to lift the 25-pound beagle off the ground,” a CBP news release says. A veterinarian said the dog suffered contusions to his right rib area and ordered “rest and a mild dose of pain meds,” agency spokesman Stephen Sapp said in an email.
Customs officers arrested Hamed Ramadan Bayoumy Aly Marie and took him to a local jail. He was charged with willfully and maliciously harming a police animal.
Further investigation revealed what Freddie had detected: 55 pounds of beef, 44 pounds of rice, 15 pounds of vegetables, corn seeds and herbs — items that were not allowed into the country and seized, according to the news release.
“Being caught deliberately smuggling well over one hundred pounds of undeclared and prohibited agriculture products does not give one permission to violently assault a defenseless Customs and Border Protection beagle,” Christine Waugh, CBP’s Area Port Director for D.C., said in a statement. “We rely heavily on our K9 partners and Freddie was just doing his job. Any malicious attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”
In a quick resolution, Marie pleaded guilty in federal court during his initial appearance Wednesday. He was ordered to pay restitution for Freddie’s vet fee — $840 — and had to report to CPB to be removed from the U.S. He flew to Egypt on Thursday.
It was just the latest chapter in an eventful life for the 5-year-old beagle, who was found on a median in Georgia before going to work for the U.S. government. The Washington Post wrote about Freddie and fellow Dulles sniffers in November.
His handler said at the time that he has learned to sniff out meat like cane rat, pigeon, snake and camel in addition to beef and pork. He is part of a “Beagle Brigade” used around the country to keep out diseases, invasive pests and plants.
According to CBP, the agency’s agriculture specialists and canines seized nearly 3,600 prohibited items including plants, meat, animal by-products or soil at U.S. entry points in a standard day last year.
Freddie’s plight drew attention on social media; well-wishers asked for updates in the comments on videos posted earlier this year on an official Facebook page.
In an Instagram post Friday, the agency said the pup would make a full recovery and shared a photo of him sampling a Starbucks “Pup Cup.”
“Freddie should be back in a week,” Sapp said in an email.
PRIVATE JETS OF CLIMATE FIGHTERS SUCH AS JOHN KERRY AND BERNIE SANDERS CAUSE MORE CLIMATE DAMAGE THAN AIRLINES!
Study Exposes the Hypocrisy of Climate Cultist Elites and Their Fossil Fuel-Guzzling Private Jets
Private jets produced more emissions than all flights at a major international airport in 2023, according to a new report from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).
The ICCT found that that the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of private jets outweighed the emissions of all flights, including commercial ones, departing London’s Heathrow airport in 2023. Just one private jet produces as much GHG emissions as 177 cars or nine heavy-duty trucks, and there has been an increasing trend in private jet emissions over the past decade, the report states.
“Private jets are a surprisingly large source of air and climate pollution,” ICCT aviation fellow Daniel Sitompul said.
“It’s pretty well known that in a typical year, private jets are responsible for about 2 percent of aviation emissions,” ICCT research director and co-author of the new report Dan Rutherford told The Washington Post. “What we’ve done for the first time is, we’ve basically used flight trajectory data to break that out into the individual contributions of airports and countries.”
The report measures and maps the GHG emissions produced globally by private jets throughout 2023 through a combination of data sources including worldwide flight paths, engine emission databases and airport coordinates, according to the report. ICCT then used the data to “spatially allocate fuel use and emissions to airports and countries for about 94% of private jet activity globally,” according to the report.
Data also indicated that GHG emissions from private jets have increased globally from 2013 to 2023, according to the report.
ICCT compared these data with Heathrow airport’s 2023 sustainability report that notes the emissions of its departures that year, the report indicates. Heathrow is Europe’s busiest airport and is now the fourth busiest in the world, though it was the seventh busiest in 2023, according to Time Out.
Though several environmentalists, celebrities and Democrats shun GHG emissions and support policies that seek to limit them, many of them have been caught using private jets to fly to and from occasions like sporting events and climate change policy summits. For example, the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference ushered in guests who arrived on private jets and proceeded to exchange ideas about cutting GHG emissions.
Prominent celebrities that preach about climate change initiatives while still regularly using private jets include Leonardo DiCaprio, Taylor Swift, Oprah and Steven Spielberg among several others. Notably, Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also recently defended his private jet usage while on his “fighting oligarchy” tour.
TEXAS SUPREME COURT MAKES COMMON SENSE DECISION REVERSING CRAZY APPELLATE COURT AWARDING $100 MILLION JUDGMENT IN CRASH CASE
Werner Wins $100M Nuclear Verdict Reversal by Texas Court
Ruling Ends Yearslong Battle Stemming From 2014 Fatal Wreck
The case stretches back to a 2018 trial in which a Houston jury returned what stands as one of the highest monetary judgments against a motor carrier. (Werner Enterprises)
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The Texas Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Werner Enterprises, reversing a $100 million jury verdict against the motor carrier upheld by an appellate court in a 2014 fatal crash in which a pickup truck lost control on a slick interstate, traveled across the highway median and collided with a Werner tractor traveling on the opposite stretch of road.
“The foregoing holdings dispose of all claims and require rendition of judgment for the defendants,” the Texas high court wrote in a June 27 ruling. “The court of appeals’ judgment is reversed, and judgment is rendered for the defendants.”
The case stretches back to a 2018 trial in which a Houston jury returned what stands as one of the highest monetary judgments against a motor carrier. Werner first appealed the jury verdict in October 2018 to the Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals in Houston. That appeal ultimately was denied in a 5-4 decision after languishing in the legal system for several years.
In its case before the state appeals court, Werner objected to the jury’s finding that the driver and company were negligent and also to the judge’s decision to allow certain evidence in the case. Werner also objected to the jury’s award of future medical care expenses for the plaintiffs.
But the Texas high court rejected the notion that the Werner driver shared in the fault for the accident.
“This awful accident happened because an out-of-control vehicle suddenly skidded across a wide median and struck the defendant’s truck, before he had time to react, as he drove below the speed limit in his proper lane of traffic,” the court wrote. “That singular and robustly explanatory fact fully explains why the accident happened and who is responsible for the resulting injuries. Because no further explanation is reasonably necessary to substantially explain the origins of this accident or to assign responsibility for the plaintiffs’ injuries, the rule of ‘proximate causation’ does not permit a fact finder to search for other, subordinate actors in the causal chain and assign liability to them.”
(Supreme Court of Texas via YouTube)
The high court said that nothing the Werner driver, Shiraz Ali, did or didn’t do contributed to the pickup truck hitting ice, losing control, veering into the median and entering oncoming traffic on an interstate highway.
However Ali was driving, the presence of his 18-wheeler in its proper lane of traffic on the other side of Interstate 20 at the precise moment the pickup truck lost control is just the kind of “happenstance of place and time” that cannot reasonably be considered a substantial factor in causing injuries to the plaintiffs.
“Instead [the pickup driver] losing control and hurtling across the median was the substantial factor in bringing about the injuries,” the court wrote. “The presence of Ali’s truck on the other side of the median at that precise moment was merely ‘the condition that made the harm possible.’ ”
“This appeal presents several distinct questions of law of manifest importance to the jurisprudence of the state, at least some of which require the reversal and rendition of the judgment below,” Werner argued in its brief filed with the high court in August 2023. Werner said the state court of appeals’ denial imposes a legal duty on Texas motorists in the state’s largest appellate district to anticipate that vehicles on the other side of a divided highway “will lose control and cross directly into their path.”
It argued further that “a failure to foresee this remote possibility and do everything possible to avoid it, including getting off the road entirely, can make a driver 100% responsible for almost any accident.”
Werner said the relevant facts of the accident are undisputed: Ali was proceeding in his lane, operating and in control of a Werner tractor-trailer, when the plaintiff’s vehicle suddenly careened into his path, leaving him no time to avoid a fatal collision.
Werner ranks No. 18 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America and No. 32 on the TT Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies in North America.
CHINA DELIVERED FAKE DRIVER LICENSES TO ALLOW MASS ILLEGAL VOTING FOR BIDEN IN 2020 ELECTION, FBI HID THIS INFORMATION, TIK TOK USER DATA USED TO CREATE FALSE ID’S
Patel, Bongino say prior FBI leaders hid evidence of Chinese interference in 2020 election
“Previous FBI leadership chose to play politics and withhold key information from the American people,” the bureau’s new top two leaders say.
FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino alleged Tuesday that the bureau’s prior leadership “chose to play politics” and hide evidence from the American people of a Chinese plot to hijack the 2020 U.S. election with fake mail-in ballots for Joe Biden.
The two FBI leaders’ statement came a week after Just the News reported Patel turned over to Congress earlier this month a long-hidden intelligence report raising concerns that China had mass-produced fake U.S. driver’s licenses to carry out a scheme to swing the 2020 election to Biden with fake mail-in ballots.
Patel located the evidence based on information that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, got from whistleblowers and forwarded to the FBI, officials said.
Patel and Bongino said Tuesday they are committed to getting Grassley and the American public more evidence about the plot and the failure to fully investigate it.
“Based on our continued review and production of FBI documents related to the CCP’s plot to interfere in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, previous FBI leadership chose to play politics and withhold key information from the American people – exposing the weaponization of law enforcement for political purposes during the height of the 2020 election season,” Patel and Bongino said in statement given to Just the News.
“Thanks to the great Oversight work of Chairman Grassley, the information the old FBI regime covered up will now be released to the public,” they added. “This FBI leadership team will continue keeping our promise of aggressive transparency and working around the clock to fix the underlying problems to restore the FBI to the trusted institution the American people deserve.”
The newly declassified intelligence reports from August 2020 weren’t corroborated or fully investigated and instead were recalled from intelligence agencies at about the time that then-FBI Director Chris Wray testified there were no known plots of foreign interference ahead of the 2020 election in which Biden defeated Donald Trump, officials told Just the News.
When they were recalled, FBI officials asked fellow spy agencies to destroy their copies of the intelligence report, which included detailed information from a cooperating confidential human source.
“This report was recalled in order to re-interview the source. Recipients should destroy all copies of the original report and remove the original report from all computer holdings,” the recall notice obtained by Just the News stated.
The subject line of the FBI intelligence bulletin succinctly stated the potential nature of the alleged plot: “Chinese Government Production and Export of Fraudulent US Driver’s Licenses to Chinese Sympathizers in the United States, in Order to Create Tens of Thousands of Fraudulent Mail-in Votes for US Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, in late August 2020
That said, the FBI bulletin provided significantly detailed information for agencies to investigate as leads to make sure the U.S. election wasn’t being hijacked by a foreign power seeking to exploit a sudden explosion in mail-in voting during the COVID-19 pandemic that struck earlier in 2020.
“In late August 2020, the Chinese government had produced a large amount of fraudulent United States driver’s licenses that were secretly exported to the United States,” the report reads “The fraudulent driver’s licenses would allow tens of thousands of Chinese students and immigrants sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party to vote for U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden despite not being eligible to vote in the United States.”
“China had collected private US user data from millions of TikTok accounts, to include name, ID and address, which would allow the Chinese government to use real US persons’ information to create the fraudulent driver’s license,” the report continues. “The fraudulent driver’s licenses were to include true ID number and true address of US citizens, making them difficult to detect. China planned to use the fraudulent driver’s licenses to account for tens of thousands of mail-in votes.”
GET USA RESIDENCY WITH $5 MILLION COST GOLDEN VISA, ALMOST 70,000 HAVE APPLIED!
Lutnick hails Trump’s $5mn investor visa as almost 70,000 apply
Programme to grant foreigners legal residency in US in exchange registers 68,703 people on waiting list
- Lutnick hails Trump’s $5mn investor visa as almost 70,000 apply on x (opens in a new window)
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current progress 100%
Alex Rogers in Washington
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Nearly 70,000 people have signed up for the new golden Trump Card, a visa scheme led by commerce secretary Howard Lutnick that will grant foreigners legal residency in the US at a cost of $5mn.
Last week, Lutnick’s department launched a website — trumpcard.gov — for would-be applicants to register their interest in the visa and to provide basic contact information, including their name, email address and region of the world. The card shown on the website features President Donald Trump’s face and signature, as well as an eagle, the Statue of Liberty and the American flag.
On Monday morning, Lutnick said his department’s internal online dashboard showed 67,697 people on the waiting list. Within an hour, the number had jumped to 68,703.
“The card will be made of gold,” the US commerce secretary told the Financial Times. “It will be beautiful.”
“Donald Trump appreciates these kinds of things. He cares about how it looks. He cares about how it feels. I mean, he deeply cares about that, and thinks if you’re going to buy and make this investment in America, we should give you something that is beautiful.”
Lutnick has said the initial idea for the visa came from billionaire Trump donor John Paulson as a way to raise revenue for the US and help it pay down its $36tn debt.
The commerce secretary said the Trump Card will appeal to business leaders and companies seeking legal residency in the US for themselves or their employees.
The chief executive of a global technology company who asked not to be named said through a spokesperson that his group would seek to buy more than 100 Trump cards if the scheme comes to “fruition”, adding he viewed the initiative as a way “to welcome the world’s best and brightest to the United States — particularly entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists”.
In 1990, Congress created a route to permanent residency for foreign investors through the EB-5 visa programme, which has a minimum investment of up to $1.8mn. About 14,000 such visas were granted last year, according to Invest In the USA, an EB-5 trade association.
Commerce Secretary Lutnick is pressing for the new scheme to replace the EB-5 visa, and is planning to expedite the creation of a much larger programme within months.
The commerce department plans to issue tens of thousands of Trump cards over the summer, said people familiar with the matter. Lutnick has said issuing 200,000 visas would reap $1tn for the Treasury.
Lutnick in May travelled with the president to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and concluded his conversations with foreign dignitaries with a pitch for the Trump Card.
“Whenever I meet with international executives, I always go through it with them and sell it to them,” he said. “I can’t help myself.”
The White House still needs to determine crucial details about the scheme, although three months ago Lutnick claimed on the All-In Podcast that it would launch in about a fortnight.
The design of a special tax structure for Trump Card holders has yet to be finalised, and while the vetting of applicants is expected to be done by the departments of homeland security, state and commerce, Trump has not decided whether citizens of any particular countries would be excluded from applying.
The White House has banned travel to the US from a dozen nations and is reportedly considering others.
Italian billionaire and stablecoin Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino in April told the FT that the success of such visas depended on the tax treatment they afforded.
Ardoino, who has partnered with Lutnick’s former firm Cantor Fitzgerald in a crypto venture, said “the problem” with Americans is “wherever they go, they have to pay taxes in the US”.
FRESH WATER FROM SEAWATER WITH NEW TECHNOLOGY!
Instead of pumping seawater onto land, why not take advantage of the ocean’s extreme natural pressure?
The world’s largest desalination plant, in Ras al-Khair, Saudi Arabia, uses older desalination technology which requires large amounts of energy.
With the world running out of clean water, deep-sea salination is on the cusp of offering a solution from the Caribbean to the Emirates
Half of all people on earth experience severe water scarcity at least one month out of the year, according to the UN. A radical new kind of desalination technology is finally on the cusp of helping to slake the world’s thirst. The pitch: Put desalination plants on the ocean floor.
First proposed in the early 1960s, this deep-sea process would benefit from both the crushing water pressure and relatively pure seawater more than 1,000 feet down. It has been unworkable until now. Only the recent commercialization of enabling innovations— including deep-sea robots from the oil-and-gas industry, and advanced reverse-osmosis filters now standard in terrestrial desalination— make it viable.
Water scarcity is projected to become much more acute in the coming decades, owing to more extreme weather patterns, the decimation of the world’s aquifers, saltwater incursion, and growing urban populations. This threatens humanity at a fundamental level— not just because we need water to drink, but because without it there’s no food or manufacturing, and precious little electricity.
Last resort
For decades, desalination has been the only reason that many places, from the Caribbean to the Emirates, have been habitable. But it’s always been a solution of last resort, for one big reason.
“Desalination is the most expensive way to make water, and there’s no getting around it,” says Tom Pankratz, who has been in the industry for 45 years, and has consulted on many of the world’s biggest desalination projects.
Up on land, engineers would literally boil the ocean, creating steam that would become drinking water and, on its way, drive some power-generating turbines to pay back a bit of its cost. It was so energy intensive that in the 1960s, some proposed using nuclear power to do it. The world’s largest desalination plant, in Ras al-Khair, Saudi Arabia, produces much of its water through evaporation.
Around the year 2000, reverseosmosis changed everything, says Pankratz. In this process, water is forced across a plastic membrane with holes so tiny only water molecules fit through, leaving behind salt and other impurities. This process requires about half the energy, making it a credible option for Trinidad, which in 2002 got a plant that now produces 40 million gallons of water a day, and Israel, which got one in 2005 that now produces 85 million gallons of water daily. Many more plants followed, and this is now the standard way to desalinate water.
That said, it is still expensive compared with traditional water sources like reservoirs and aquifers— between about $2 and $6 per 1,000 gallons, says Pankratz. A lot of that cost depends on the price of electricity, says Eric Hoek, a professor of engineering at University of California, Los Angeles, who advises OceanWell, a desalination tech company.
There are other costs to keeping desalination plants at the ocean’s edge. Intakes can suck up marine life; outflow pipes can dump a concentrated brine hazardous to that same marine life back into the sea. These issues led California to reject in 2022 a decades- in-the-works desalination plant for water-starved Hunting–ton Beach.
Down where it’s wetter
Oslo-based Flocean, Nether–lands- based Waterise and Bay Area-based OceanWell are among the companies that seized on this idea—then submerged it to a depth of at least 400 meters.
The principle is easy to grasp: Instead of expending huge amounts of energy to pump seawater onto land, and then pressurize it inside a plant, why not take advantage of the ocean’s extreme natural pressure? At depth, seawater naturally wants to cross a desalination membrane, so long as the fresh water on the other side of it is being pumped to the surface. The result is a net energy savings of up to 40%.
There are other big advantages: These facilities can be far from shore and out of sight, so there’s no competition for beachfront property. Once in place, the systems can be scaled up without having to negotiate over real estate.
Because the process happens down so deep, the saltier brine byproduct is quickly dispersed by the ocean without harming aquatic plants or animals. And at that depth, the ocean is cleaner— free of the microorganisms, fish poop and other debris that can quickly foul a reverse-osmosis membrane.
There’s no fundamental scientific breakthrough enabling these systems, say the CEOs of all three companies, just the wider availability, lower prices and increasing functionality of deep-sea robots, undersea power cables and other technologies.
Actual customers
Despite the technology’s promise, these three companies have so far only built modest facilities to prove their value to potential customers. The deals they’re all seeking are multidecade contracts with governments. While they don’t come easily, they are the kind of customers that are necessary to turn these tech demos into actual businesses.
Both Flocean and Waterise put their pilot plants on the seabed just offshore of Norway, not far from all the North Sea drilling that produces energy for the region. Flocean is already producing ultrapure water for a local company that makes high-end cocktail ice.
OceanWell has its demo facility at a reservoir in California’s Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, not far inland from Malibu.
Flocean’s first customer will be a large offshore industrial facility
in Norway called Mongstad, which is expected to initially produce about 264,000 gallons of water a day from a single, 40-ton unit. Expected to come online in the second half of 2026, it will be the world’s first large-scale deep-sea desalination plant, says Alex Fuglesang, CEO of the company.
Waterise has announced a deal with an industrial customer, Jordan Phosphates Mines Co., to provide 6.6 million gallons of water a day desalinated deep in the Gulf of Aqaba. The company plans to begin construction later this year on its first plant capable of producing between 7.9 million and 13 million gallons a day.
That’s the goal, at least. Until some of these are actually operating at the bottom of the ocean, for years if not decades, it will be hard to know if they can make good on their promises, says UCLA’s Hoek. It’s unclear how much maintenance they’ll require, and how fluctuations in salinity and temperature might affect their performance.
History is full of ideas that worked in principle, from nuclearpowered cargo ships to solar-thermal power generators in the deep desert. Pankratz, the saltiest of industry veterans, thinks at least one of these companies will be able to set up shop in the down deep. “How close that is, and how many of these things there eventually are, is another question,” he says.
An OceanWell desalination pod. The company has a demo facility not far inland from Malibu, Calif.
FBI LIES AND LIES AND HIDES FACTS ABOUT OKLAHOMA BOMBING TRAGEDY, BIGGEST DOMESTIC TERRORIST ATTACK BEFORE 9/11
30-Year Cover-Up: Newly Unearthed Records Confirm FBI Lied about OKC Bomb Footage
‘These same RTA videotapes would show John Doe 2, the accomplice that 24-witnesses have said was in the truck with McVeigh that morning…’
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) There was a lot of news last week about the FBI suppressing evidence: Sen. Chuck Grassley alleged Thursday that the bureau has a “Prohibited Access” label to hide damning documents, while Director Kash Patel was widely criticized a day later for his dubious claims that the FBI doesn’t have footage of sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s associates abusing girls.
To top it off, an attorney suing the FBI in federal court filed a motion Friday afternoon, accusing the bureau of lying about footage in another scandalous case: the Oklahoma City bombing, which remains the deadliest domestic terrorism attack in American history.
The late-Friday motion comes from Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue, who’s been suing the FBI for records on the OKC bombing for decades. Trentadue said in his motion that a researcher he works with recently uncovered previously hidden FBI records about the bombing. Those records, unearthed by OKC bomb researcher Richard Booth, show that an agent falsely testified in court that the bureau didn’t have surveillance footage of OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh and his mystery accomplice “John Doe 2.”
“Booth did a text based search of those FBI records and discovered therein four documents proving that the Bureau is in possession of videotapes from security cameras at the Regency Towers Apartments (“RTA”) that show the destruction of the Murrah Federal Building, and Timothy McVeigh actually arming the truck bomb at approximately 8:57 am on the morning of [April] 19, 1995, when the Ryder Truck that was carrying the bomb was parked in front of the RTA,” Trentadue’s motion states.
“More importantly, these same RTA videotapes would show John Doe 2, the accomplice that 24-witnesses have said was in the truck with McVeigh that morning, but who the FBI insists never existed.”
Trentadue’s filing comes some 17 years after he initially sued the FBI for surveillance footage of the OKC bombing in 2008. His lawsuit went to trial in 2014, and the FBI vociferously argued that no footage from the RTA buildings exists. The presiding judge has yet to issue a final judgment, in large part due to allegations that the FBI tampered with one of Trentadue’s witnesses (that wild saga can be read here).
While the court continues to investigate the witness-tampering allegations, Trentadue now also wants the presiding judge to reopen his original case that went to trial, and to consider the new evidence uncovered by Booth.
According to Trentadue, the existence of new records gives him an even stronger case for the presiding judge to rule in his favor. Moreover, Trentadue said the new OKC records support Sen. Grassley’s allegations that the FBI intentionally hides FBI records by filing them under “Prohibited Access” status—meaning that they don’t appear in the bureau’s general records-keeping system.
The FBI has declined to comment on Trentadue’s case.
New Records: What do They Say?
Just eight days after the Oklahoma City bombing, an FBI agent named Jon Hersley testified in court that security footage from the top of a nearby apartment complex showed the bombers’ Ryder Truck heading towards the Murrah building minutes before the explosion.
“I believe that particular camera was located on the apartment building there,” Hersley said on the stand during McVeigh’s April 27, 1995, preliminary hearing—referring to the Regency Tower Apartments, or RTA. “I don’t know the exact location of the camera, but it kind of scans that whole area there … It scans in front of the Tower building and also over towards the parking lot.”
But when Trentadue sued for the footage nearly 20 years later, Hersley suddenly changed his tune. At Trentadue’s 2014 trial, he testified that he was mistaken in his 1995 testimony, and that the RTA camera he described didn’t exist. Instead, Hersley testified he had only seen pictures from an ATM machine’s camera that was inside of the Regency Tower Apartments.
At the time, Trentadue expressed skepticism over Hersley’s contradictory testimony.
“The testimony about this videotape given by Mr. Hersley 20 years ago just after the bombing conflicts with the testimony that he gave at this trial,” Trentadue said in a December 2014 proposed findings of facts, which he filed after the trial concluded. “The testimony given by Mr. Hersley at the [April 1995] Preliminary Hearing is the more credible.”
Fast forward another 10-plus years: OKC bombing researcher Booth has apparently proven that Trentadue was correct.
In a sworn declaration accompanying Trentadue’s Friday motion, Booth said he was tasked to search through a trove of some 1.5 million pages of documents from the FBI case file of Terry Nichols—one of McVeigh’s accomplices who helped him build a bomb, but who wasn’t in Oklahoma on the day of the attack. Booth said he found records about the Regency Tower Apartments’ security footage—records that were hidden from Trentadue and the public for decades.
The first record Booth found is an FBI report detailing an interview agents conducted with Wesley Edward Bogie, who worked security at the Regency Tower Apartments. According to the FBI report, agents showed Bogie “three still photographs taken from the RTA security camera,” which depicted McVeigh’s Ryder Truck and two individuals nearby. The significance of this report is that the footage it describes couldn’t have been from the ATM machine inside the apartment complex—it must’ve been from another camera, according to Booth.
Another record Booth found describes footage clear enough that the Regency Tower Apartment’s assistant manager was able to identify a tenant that was pictured. Again, this indicates that the footage came from a camera other than the ATM inside of the building, Booth said in his declaration.
A third record Booth found is from the FBI’s June 1996 interview of Oklahoma City Police Department Sgt. Ritchie Willis, who told agents that he recovered film from a Regency Towers security camera that “was still recording” at the time it was removed. Willis said he provided that film to FBI agent Lou Ann Sandstrom about eight hours after the bombing.
“This document is highly significant because it establishes as a fact that the tape obtained by Sgt. Willis was still recording when it was taken into custody, that the recording came from one of the RTA security cameras, that the camera depicted 5th Street, and that it was removed from a VCR,” Booth said in his declaration.
The fourth record states that the private firm ADT Security serviced the external security cameras at the Regency Tower Apartments—another indication that such footage exists, but is being suppressed by the FBI.
“More importantly, the obvious conclusion one can draw from these documents is that the RTA videotapes contain material that the Bureau does not want people to see, namely, the still-unidentified John Doe #2,” Booth added—referring to McVeigh’s accomplice, whom the FBI initially launched a massive manhunt for, only to later claim that he never actually existed.
What Now?
In his Friday motion, Trentadue asked for the judge to reopen his case to consider the new records unearthed by Booth.
“This newly discovered evidence consists of the Bureau’s own records that were deliberately withheld from both the Court and Plaintiff,” Trentadue said.
“This evidence is also very important because it shows that the FBI did not conduct a good faith reasonable search for responsive records and, in all fairness, the Court should receive and consider this evidence especially given the FBI’s attempts to mislead the Court about the ‘search’ that was actually done in response to Plaintiff’s FOIA Request and the results of that search,” he added.
The Justice Department must now respond to Trentadue’s motion. What happens next is unclear, as Trentadue’s case is already in uncharted territory—this writer is unaware of any other FOIA case in history to go to trial, and the transparency group Judicial Watch has described the lawsuit as one of the most extraordinary FOIA cases in American history.
“We’re one of the largest FOIA litigants in this country, and we’ve never been involved in anything that involves that degree of alleged misconduct by the [FBI]. It’s astounding,” Judicial Watch investigator Sean Dunagan told this reporter in 2022.
If the judge rules in his favor, Trentadue seeks to depose FBI agents and search their physical archives to see what they did with the missing surveillance footage. But the FBI has said in court briefings that the court doesn’t have the power to let Trentadue do that—suggesting that the bureau would appeal any judgment against it.
Such an appeal could extend the litigation for years. Meanwhile, Trentadue still awaits a separate judgment in the same case, over the witness tampering allegations he made a decade ago.
HOW DO HEDGE FUNDS ACTUALLY WORK, AD HOW INVESTORS TYPICALLY JUST HAVE LACKLUSTER RETURNS
HOW TO HEDGE FUNDS ACTUALLY WORK???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtO5hg69ZUs
Secrets of Hedge Funds: How Billionaires Gamble Without Losing
Today’s billionaires have a private playground for investing—and it’s not the stock market you know. Hedge funds have become the go-to tool for the world’s elite to seek big returns, explore secret deals, and enjoy a level of freedom rarely seen anywhere else in finance. But hedge funds weren’t always this secretive, exclusive, or even risky. To understand how hedge funds work and why the rich love them, you need to know where it all started, who gets in, and how the money is really made.
Video summary generated with artificial intelligence.
Back in the 1950s, Alfred Winslow Jones—a sociologist, not a Wall Street banker—changed investing forever. He created the first hedge fund. The word hedge simply means protection. Think of buying travel insurance for a flight: if your flight’s canceled, you lose the ticket price, but the insurance gives some money back. Jones applied this concept to investing by betting on winners and against losers in the market. This clever mix aimed to balance risk no matter which way stocks moved. At the time, this was a game-changing idea.
Jones’s original hedge fund idea focused on reducing risk, but today hedge funds are almost the opposite: high-risk, secretive, and closed off to most people. Instead of safety, modern hedge funds have earned a reputation for exclusivity and aggressive bets. How did things shift so much?
The 1920s was a wild party for the economy. Companies like Ford made goods cheaper and life more modern. Almost everyone tried their luck in the stock market, hoping to get rich overnight. But there were no rules to keep things honest.
Popular but fake investments included:
- Gold mines that didn’t exist
- Airline companies with no planes
- Cactus farms in New Jersey
This fantasy crashed in October 1929. Stocks tanked, banks failed, millions lost their savings, and the U.S. sank into the Great Depression.
To fix the chaos, Congress passed the Securities Act of 1933, forcing companies to honestly report their finances when selling stock. In 1934, the Securities Exchange Act created the SEC, a watchdog over markets. These actions gave public investors two important things: real data and a fair shot. Today, you can see real company reports before you put your money at risk.
Unlike mutual funds, hedge funds don’t need to cater to the public. They only accept money from “accredited investors”—typically people with over $1 million net worth (not counting their home) or earning above $200,000 a year. Because they’re private, hedge funds skip most of the safety rules that protect regular investors. The logic: if you’re that rich, you can afford to risk it.
In a typical hedge fund, a group of wealthy people pools their money and trusts a fund manager to invest it. The approach is simple: “Trust me.” There’s hardly any day-to-day reporting, and managers don’t have to share their moves. Investors let the manager “cook” their strategy with little oversight and hope for bigger returns.
Hedge funds can invest in anything—Japanese interest rates, collapsing Chinese real estate, rare paintings, natural gas futures, or even the fate of entire economies. They use strategies most public funds aren’t allowed to touch, such as aggressive short selling, complex derivatives, and heavy borrowing. The rich look for new hunting grounds, and hedge funds let them in.
Imagine public investing as fishing from a crowded dock. It’s safe and transparent, but you only catch what’s already close by. Hedge funds are submarines: small, expert crews with hidden tools dive deep for treasures no one else can see. That secrecy gives them an edge—at least in theory.
Hedge funds don’t broadcast what they own or trade. If rivals saw their strategies, they could simply copy them or drive up prices mid-trade. Even investors rarely get frequent updates. With no public oversight, trust is key, and managers guard their bets jealously.
Once you’re in, you often can’t get out quickly. Most hedge funds have lock-up periods—six months, a year, or more. This helps managers avoid selling assets in a panic and lets their long-term bets mature.
Hedge fund managers use a famous pay model: the 2% management fee and 20% performance fee.
| Fund Size | Annual 2% Fee | 20% Performance Fee (on $100M gain) |
| $1B | $20M | $20M |
Managers get 2% of the fund’s assets every year, win or lose. If returns are good, they collect 20% of profits as well. There’s a “high water mark” rule that stops repeated performance fees unless the fund recovers any losses—but that 2% rolls in no matter what.
Investors question the high fees, lack of transparency, and mixed results—especially when simple index funds often perform just as well or better after fees. Many wonder: why pay big for mystery deals? For those curious about long-term market returns, watch Will The Stock Market Always Go Up?.
Despite doubts, hedge funds pull in billions. The lure isn’t just big profits. It’s access to unique deals and strategies you simply can’t get elsewhere. For the ultra wealthy, it’s about being in the right rooms and not missing out on private opportunities.
Hedge funds offer plays regular investors can’t find. These include:
- High-frequency trading
- Global macroeconomic bets
- Political and regulatory bets
- Complex derivatives
- Private loans and rare asset deals
These go way beyond standard stocks and index funds.
Managing complex portfolios full-time is a headache. Hedge funds act like private chefs—they do the heavy lifting, let the client enjoy results, and save time along the way.
Hedge funds operate like private clubs. Joining means access to strategic relationships, insider deals, and social status. Being a limited partner signals you belong to an influential financial circle.
The wealthy lean on hedge funds for strategies that don’t move with the rest of their portfolio. Even if returns lag, they can reduce risk by spreading bets across different investments.
Hedge funds carry a mystique. They’re seen as the secret weapon of the rich—fuel for headlines, movies, and envy. For many, being “in” gives hope of catching the next big winner and the social status that comes with it.
What started as a tool for risk control has become an exclusive club for chasing big wins. Hedge funds now mean access, secrecy, and high stakes in a world few ever see.
For most investors, public markets offer safety and fairness. Hedge funds sit behind closed doors, trading higher risk for a chance at higher rewards. Know how these worlds differ before venturing in.
Conclusion
Hedge funds began as a clever way to protect against loss but have grown into something far more complex. They aren’t just about chasing returns—they offer access, connections, and status. Most people will never set foot in that world, but understanding hedge funds helps explain how the rich invest and why those rooms remain the most exclusive in finance.